■ National Center for Missing and Exploited Children- www.missingkids.org

■ U.S. Department of Justice's AMBER Alert- www.amberalert.gov

■ A Child is Missing Alert- To sign up for text alerts, for when a Missing Child Alert is issued in your area visit www.achildismissing.org

■ Wireless AMBER Alerts- To sign up for text alerts, for when an AMBER Alert is issued in you area visit www.wirelessamberalerts.org.

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Difference between AMBER and Missing Child Alerts:

The Department of Justice and FDLE's criteria for issuing AMBER Alerts follows-

■ Law enforcement must confirm that anabduction has taken place.

■ The child is at risk of serious injury or death.

■ There is sufficient descriptive information of child, captor or captor's vehicle to issue an alert.

■ The child must be 17-years-old or younger.

■ It is recommended that immediate entry of AMBER Alert data be entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC). Text information describing the circumstances surrounding the abduction of the child should be entered, and the case flagged as Child Abduction.

A month later, an AMBER Alert was issued for 5-year-old Putnam County resident Haleigh Cummings, less than 24 hours after she was reported missing.

The cases are similar, yet law enforcement took different approaches. Why?

The answer, according to Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, lies in the differences between the AMBER and Missing Child Alerts — and what activates each one.

Known as the AMBER Alert, "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response" system was created as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman of Arlington, Texas.

Back in 1996, Amber was kidnapped and murdered while riding her bicycle in her neighborhood. As a result, local law enforcement and broadcasters teamed up to create the AMBER Alert program, an early warning system to help find abducted children.

The voluntary program lets broadcasters and transportation authorities immediately distribute information about recent child abductions to the public, enabling the community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of the child.

Nationwide there are 120 AMBER plans, which include 53 statewide plans, 29 regional plans and 38 local plans.

"As of a month ago, there were 432 kids who we are aware of who have been recovered through AMBER Alerts," Allen said.

And although the system's criteria differs slightly from state to state, most follow the guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice through the 2003 PROTECT Act: law enforcement must confirm that a child has been abducted, the child must be 17 years old or younger, the child must be in serious risk of injury or death, and the data must be entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center and flagged as a child abduction.

There also must be thorough descriptions and pictures of the missing child, the suspected abductor, and a suspected vehicle along with any other information available and valuable to identifying the child and suspect.

In Adji's case, Collier investigators couldn't rule out that the mentally disabled boy might have wandered off into the surrounding area.

"We did discuss it, but we didn't request it," said Capt. Chris Roberts of the Collier County sheriff's Criminal Investigation Division. "The biggest thing gained by the AMBER Alert are the highway signs. They're useful if you have a vehicle description. We didn't have a vehicle description."

Adji was last seen playing outside of his grandmother's Farm Worker Village home in Immokalee and nobody saw the boy disappear.

"Clearly in a case like Adji's, you just want to do everything you can," Allen said. "In a case like that, the temptation is to issue the AMBER Alert, even though you don't have the description."

Instead, soon after Adji disappeared, Collier requested that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) issue a Missing Child Alert.

For a case to qualify for the Missing Child Alert in Florida: the child has to be reported missing to a law enforcement agency and entered into the National Crime Information Center database; the child must be 17 years old or younger and must have gone missing in Florida.

Between the alert, the massive multi-agency task force Collier authorities put together, the hundreds of volunteers, and the search teams scouring Immokalee and its surrounding area, more than 1,000 people turned out to help find Adji.

For his part, Allen said no one could fault the Collier County Sheriff's Office for its response.

"The Collier County Sheriff's Office was all over it," he said. "It's hard to imagine law enforcement responding more aggressively."

Haleigh's case was different, because her family reported that she was in her room the night before and then was gone a few hours later.

"I think clearly you have to assume abduction," Allen said.

Putnam County sheriff's Detective Peggy Cone agreed and said the decision to issue an AMBER Alert came after the department determined there may have been an abduction by a stranger.

Once that distinction was made, Cone said the Putnam Sheriff's Office notified FDLE.

"You can't just say ‘I want an AMBER Alert,' " Cone said. "It has to go through the proper channels."

Cone said the investigation and search for Haleigh continues.

According to FDLE spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha, among the 48 AMBER Alert requests submitted to the state in 2008, 15 were declined, 12 resulted in the activation of a Missing Child Alert instead and nine kids were located before an AMBER Alert was activated. In 2008, 12 AMBER Alerts were issued, Perezluha said.

But issuing one type of alert over the other doesn't make one case more important than the other, she said.

Allen agreed, adding that the different alert categories help prevent the public from becoming desensitized to AMBER Alerts because of a large number of false alarms.

"It's tough if it's your child that disappears. You are going to want the AMBER Alert and the National Guard," Allen said, adding that in both Adji's and Haleigh's cases, the center has distributed posters with the children's information and helped gather volunteers to aid searchers. "But you can't do the AMBER Alert on every case, or people will stop paying attention."

Allen also cautioned that the AMBER Alert is not "the be-all to end-all."

"It is a tool, not ‘the' tool," he said.

But Allen admits that as a "tool," AMBER has become universally recognized and has evolved to include text message alerts/mails for which people can sign up.

The program also has garnered so much positive response in the U.S. that it has gone international with Canada, Australia, France, Malaysia and the Netherlands each having their own version.

"The good news is that there are millions of people that know who Adji Desir and Haleigh Cummings are, who are aware and are looking," Allen said.

He added that the important thing is that there is hope and that the search goes on, including exposure Saturday on the national TV show "America's Most Wanted."

"Just because it's been a month in Adji's case and just because it's been three weeks in Haleigh's case, does not mean the case ends," Allen said. "We are going to continue to search for them."